Nursery Newsletter

We have been asked to pass on infomation to you with regards possible participation in a childcare survey.

Please see the details below. Its great to get views from people who are using childcare, so if you have the time and interest i think it would be of value.

Kind regards

Elaine Caffary

Nursery Manager

Interested in giving your views about childcare?

The Family and Childcare Trust, in conjunction with The London Borough of Hillingdon, are holding two focus groups on Thursday 24 May to hear from parents about support that will help them to work and help with the costs of childcare.

We need people willing to attend either:

A focus group looking at the support that parents need at work to help them balance work and care. This will include how caring responsibilities affect parents' ability to work and what more could be done to help with this, especially by employers.

A focus group about the support that is available to help with the costs of childcare - parents' view about the current system and how this could work differently in the future.

Parents who attend one of these focus groups will receive a £20 Love2Shop voucher as a thank you for taking part.

If you think you might be interested in attending one of these focus groups, please can you either:

Phone Hillingdon Families' Information Service on 01895 556489

Please note places on these focus groups are limited and so if you have not heard from us by Friday 11 May, your application has been unsuccessful.

These groups are being run by the Family and Childcare Trust, a national charity. They are being paid for by the trade union Unison, as part of their research and policy development about how best to support families who are, or would like to be, in paid work.

What will be discussed?

There will be two groups with slightly different focuses. The first will look at the support parents need in the workplace to help them balance work and care. This will include questions about how caring responsibilities affect their decisions about work and vice versa. We would be interested to hear about things that can be done to make it easier for them to get the right balance, in particular by employers.

The second will look at the practicalities of how a different system of childcare support could work. This will include thinking about ways that they can currently get help with childcare costs (for example, tax credits and childcare vouchers) and testing ideas for a new system of support.

What preparation is needed?

No preparation by participants is needed for either group.

Who can attend?

These groups are open to any parent with a child under the age of 16. It does not matter whether they currently use formal, paid for childcare. Ideally we would like a mixture of parents who are currently in paid work and those who are not. We are looking to recruit ten to twelve parents per group. If parents are part of a couple, only one of them should attend.

What about timings?

The first focus group will run from 12pm - 1pm and the second will run from 1.30pm - 2.30pm. Parents can only attend one of the focus groups.

How do incentives work?

We will give each parent who attends a £20 Love2Shop voucher. These can be used in many high street shops and restaurants. Parents will be asked to sign for the voucher at the end of the session.

What about privacy?

We will keep everything that is said in the groups entirely anonymous. We will not use anyone’s name or information that identifies them when we write them up. We will tape record the groups to make it easier to take good notes, and the tapes will be deleted after they have been written up. We will ask parents to sign for their vouchers, and their signatures will be kept for our financial records separately from the records of the group.